The Eighteenth Floor of Involution is called the mysterious power that dominates domestic entertainment. What does Involution really mean?

Involution refers to the social development that begins to stagnate at a certain stage, that is, irrational internal competition among only a small number of people, and only a small part of this small number of people benefit. , leading to a state of loss for most people in the end. Nowadays, most people use involution to describe competition within universities or jobs. After all, the typical example is the postgraduate entrance examination in 2021. Some top universities have a large number of 400 points for a popular major, which directly leads to some people with high scores to enter. If you can't go to this university, you can only transfer to a less satisfactory school. However, some universities have good scores but are unable to recruit students.

In short, involution is not a good social phenomenon. Society cannot influence other people’s thoughts, but it can invisibly guide people’s values.

Involution is everywhere

Involution is everywhere nowadays, and if we are not careful, we are also one of them. Taking my own personal experience as an example, is it really necessary to take the civil service examination and have a casual job in a third- or fourth-tier small city, but there are a large number of graduate students applying for it? Perhaps most people think it is necessary, because civil service jobs are really good, but if the social atmosphere develops in this direction, a large number of graduate students and PhDs will compete to squeeze into the system that does not require much technology, and then a large number of high-quality private companies will look at it. It is not as good as ordinary undergraduates, but ordinary undergraduates look down on ordinary small private companies, which directly leads to the illusion of difficulty in finding a job.

The involution of the fandom has also become a topic among netizens. Take some talent shows as an example. Through the performances of idols, fans can vote and support their idols, issue after issue. Voting, elimination period by period. This directly leads to a large number of fans spending money to compete for their idols in the fandom. If your idol has it, my idol must also have it. No matter how much money you invest, we cannot lose.

In the end, did the idol make a profit? Did the fans profit? Of course not, it’s the people behind the scenes who are profiting. Involution makes a small number of people gain, while most people suffer.

The value of life lies in choice

Finally, I personally believe that the phenomenon of involution is caused by the psychological effect of society on people, which affects a person's choices. For example: Why does everyone want to enter the system? Because outside the system is unstable. Why are more and more highly educated people going to be primary school teachers? Because the salary is high. Why do we invest so much money in idols? Because I can’t lose to what I like. Others. Obviously we are the ones who suffer in the end, but the social atmosphere guides us to choose the best path pointed out to us by society.